Cadere (Street Level)

In Cadere, players perform a series of slow gestures to create an abstract after-image linked to their physical movement. The performance is contextualized within the broader motion of falling, and is inspired by the following quote from Viktor Wynd:

“Decadence comes from the latin word cadere – which means to fall. It is the beautiful way to fall. It’s a very slow movement which has lots of beauty. It can be a kind of self-killing in a beautiful way, a tragic way.”

As players near the bottom of their descent, they have the option of performing a stop gesture, or hitting the ground. If players choose the later, the pattern they have created becomes part of a cumulative pattern left by all players making this choice but they cannot see it. Instead, projected beneath their feet is a black screen. If they choose the former, their fail slows dramatically and stops, revealing the cumulative designs of former players but the pattern created by the player is not added, and is discarded. What constitutes a winning condition, outside the instantiation of gestural patterns, is left intentionally ambiguous.

Street Level is a research-creation project for sidewalk accessible arcade-format videogames. The project is currently being funded by Concordia’s Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG), as part of the PLAYPR project (GRAND-NCE). Games will use Microsoft’s Kinect motion tracking peripheral through vacant storefront windows, with games playing on projectors or large-scale monitors inside.

The goals behind Street Level are as follows:

To create persistent games playable, accessible, and engaging, from the sidewalk in front of a storefront window or similar glass wall; and

To present game art in a public setting, in a manner that might help support urban renewal.

Street Level further explores work within the emerging “new arcade” movement: experimental videogames designed explicitly for public gatherings and arts venues.